Accident Causation transcript

hi my name is leader welcome to ledology Channel A Space to talk about leadership environment health and safety inside out please do not forget to subscribe to our Channel and activate the Bell to receive all our new videos today we will talk about accident causation what are the causes of accidents why do some people have more accidents than others is there such a thing as accident proneness the above questions feature prominently in the study and investigation of accidents and the causes of Occupational ill health hazards may result in immediate physical injury long-term physical injury long-term damage to health including psychiatric injury associated with stress at work it is possible to construct accident causation models such as that produced by hail and hail 1972. however there is a basic chain of causation in any accident situation commencing with a set of events or circumstances which leads to the event resulting in the accident or ill health condition the objective of any accident prevention strategy is therefore the breaking of the sequence by some form of pre-accident strategy accident causation theories a number of theories have been put forward over the last century with respect to the causes of accidents one of the first theories is the pure chance Theory this theory states that everyone in the population has an equal chance of sustaining an accident and treated accidents as an act of God leaving one to accept the fact that prevention is non-existent it suggests that no discernible pattern emerges in the events that lead up to an accident the biased liability Theory this Theory considers that once a person sustains an accident the probability that the same person will sustain a further accident in the future has either decreased or increased when compared with the rest of the population at risk if the probability has increased the phenomenon is referred to as the contagion hypothesis if the probability has decreased on the other hand it is commonly called the burned fingers hypothesis the Domino Theory one of the more colorful theories of accident causation was formulated by Heinrich in 1959 and is known as the Domino Theory this Theory explains the accident process in terms of five factors one ancestry and social environment two Fault by the person three the unsafe act and or mechanical or physical hazard for the accident 5. the injury these factors are in a fixed and logical order each one is dependent on the one immediately preceding it so that if one is absent no injury can occur and the theory can be visualized as five standing dominoes in which the behavior of these dominoes is studied when subjected to a disturbing Force when the first social environment Falls the other four follow automatically unless one of the factors has been corrected thereby creating a gap in the required sequence for producing an accident the five factors in heinrich's domino theory are described in this table the domino theory was subsequently extended by bird and Loftus 1984 to include the influence of management as part of the causes and effects of accidents a modified sequence of events is shown in this table this modified accident sequence is applicable to most types of accident and can be shown in this diagrammatic form multiple causation Theory heinrich's Theory 1931 is very much a theory of single causation however very rarely is there one single cause of an accident multiple causation or causality refers to the fact that there may be more than one cause of an accident each of these multi-causes is equivalent to the third domino in the Heinrich Theory and can represent an unsafe act or condition or situation each of these can itself have multi-causes and the process during accident investigation of following each branch back to its root is known as fault tree analysis the theory of multiplication is that contributing causes combined together in a random fashion to result in an accident during accident investigations there is a need to identify as many of these causes as possible for example a maintenance employee notices that the eaves gutter to a single-story building is overflowing during periods of rain suggesting that the outlet to the rainwater pipe is blocked with debris he shins up the rainwater Pike and reaches into the outlet to remove the debris however his foot slips on the brickwork surface to the wall and he falls backwards fracturing his wrist in the fall the single causation approach adopted by Heinrich would analyze this accident thus one unsafe condition overflowing Eaves gutter two unsafe act failing to use a stepladder three cause foot slipped on brickwork the multiple causation approach would view this situation differently one unsafe condition of overflowing gutter which should have been noted by maintenance employees during previous rainfall 2. unsafe act the maintenance employee attempted to take a quick fix Solution by Shinning up the rainwater pipe instead of using a step ladder three cause unsafe working practice due to the absence of a formal procedure for work at height under normal circumstances the defect should have been noted and reported to the maintenance department this action would have initiated a specific procedure for this task including the provision of correct Access Equipment and a safe system of work perhaps with a second employee securing the latter during removal of debris by the first employee the chances of being hurt are related to the various multi-causes identified which may be both direct or indirect multi-causes at the end of this video I wish you had a quick refresher on the accident causation please share your feedback about the video with me so I can enhance and adjust to your needs continuous Improvement is very important to me also please do not forget to subscribe to my channel and activate the Bell to be notified each time I post a video I wish you all a great 2023 ahead